Cassiopeia the Serpent’s Embrace/Strategy

- Cassiopeia is a deadly Ability Power champion, excelling in damage over time, mobility, harassment, and crowd control. The skill-leveling order for her abilities should be Noxious Blast (Q), followed by Twin Fang (E), finished by Miasma (W), leveling up her Ultimate, Petrifying Gaze (R) whenever you get the chance (levels 6, 11, 16).

- There are many different ways to build Cassiopeia, but the primary start is to buy Boots of Speed with 3 Health Potions first, upgrading your boots into Sorcerer's Shoes when you can, and getting 1 or 2 Doran's Rings on your first chance to go back. The following items on her are very viable and can be purchased in any order, but you will want to check the enemy team to see what items you should buy first.

- Will of the Ancients: +50 Ability Power with a Unique Aura, giving you and your teammates +30 Ability power and 20% Spell Vamp. Great for sustain in lane and being able to out-heal the harassment you get.

- Rabadon's Deathcap: +140 Ability Power with a Unique Passive increasing your total ability power by +30%. Amazing on every AP-Based Champion.

- Rylai's Crystal Scepter: +500 Health, +80 Ability Power, with a Unique Passive, which slows enemies hit by your abilities by 35% for 1.5 seconds, and by 15% if the ability you used was a multi-target or damage-over-time spell. Cassiopeia excels with this item, as it makes chasing or escaping her enemies that much easier with the movement speed bonus already given to her from Noxious Blast.

Once those items, alone with your Sorcerer's Shoes are completed, the following items can be bought for additional damage, protection, or mobility.

- Void Staff: +70 Ability Power, with a Unique +40% Magic Penetration. This is a great item against teams who have alot of Magic Resistance.

- Zhonya's Hourglass: +100 Ability Power, +50 Armor, with a Unique Active ability that lets you turn yourself un-targetable for 2 seconds, also making you invincible and immune to any attacks, but also not be able to attack anyone or move anywhere. Cooldown on this Active ability is 90 seconds. Zhonya's is a strong item, and if you get focused too fast in a teamfight, this will keep you alive longer and hopefully grab your team's attention to help you.

- Deathfire Grasp: +80 Ability Power, with a Unique Passive of +15% Cooldown reduction, and a Unique Active that deals magic damage to a champion equal to 25% of their current health, (+4% per 100 ability power you have), with a minimum of 200 damage. Very strong item which helps increase your DPS overall.

- Athene's Unholy Grail: +80 Ability Power +36 Magic Resist +15 Mana Regen per 5 seconds, with a Unique Passive of 15% Cooldown Reduction, another unique passive that restores 12% of your max Mana on Kill or Assist, and one more Unique Passive that increases your Mana Regen by 1% per 1% Mana you are missing. This passive doesn't stack with Chalice of Harmony. The Unholy Grail is effective as it ensures you almost never run out of mana in teamfights, and helps with more cooldown reduction, some ability power, and some magic resist.

- Abyssal Scepter: +70 Ability Power +57 Magic Resist with a Unique Aura that reduces the Magic Resist of nearby enemy champions by 20. A great item if the enemy has a strong Ability Power Champion as well as some Magic Resist. This will give you a bit of protection and reduce the enemy's defense against you.

- Banshee's Veil: +375 Health +375 Mana +50 Magic Resist with a Unique Passive that gives you a spell shield that blocks the next incoming enemy ability, with a 45-second cooldown once the shield is used. Another great item to counter the enemy team's strong magic damage, while giving you some Mana and Health to stay alive and keep using abilities.

- Moonflair Spellblade: +50 Ability Power with a Unique Passive that gives you +35 Tenacity (Tenacity reduces the duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds and immobilizes. This item doesn't stack with other Tenacity items.) The Spellblade is great against teams with a large amount of crowd control that you can't seem to escape or evade.

- Lich Bane: +350 Mana +80 Ability Power +30 Magic Resist +7% Movement Speed with a Unique Passive, in which after using an ability, your next basic attack gains bonus physical damage equal to your Ability Power. This Passive has a 2-second cooldown and does not stack with Trinity Force's Passive. This item increases your damage greatly by letting your auto attack serve as another spell, and also gives you a bit more mobility. Also effective for pushing turrets.

- Archangel's Staff: +400 Mana +25 Mana Regen per 5 seconds +45 Ability Power, with a passive that grants ability power equal to 3% of your maximum Mana, and a Unique Passive that increases your maximum Mana by 4 each time you use an ability. This has a 3-second cooldown, and the bonus stops as +1000 Mana. This Passive does not stack with Tear of the Goddess or Manamune's passives. This item is too costly and not worth the money. Blue Buff and Athene's will be sufficient to ensure you have enough Mana in fights.

- Guardian Angel: +68 Armor +38 Magic Resist with a Unique Passive that revives your champion when they die, and restores 750 Health and 375 Mana. This passive has a 5-Minute Cooldown, and is an effective item if you are focused in teamfights, and do not have enough time do use your ultimate effectively or do enough damage. This item is viable on every carry, but in some situations better defensive items are more useful.

- Quick Silver Sash: +56 Magic Resist with a Unique Active that removes all debuffs from your champion, on a 90-second cooldown. Great if there is that one stun from the enemy that you need to dodge, and if you can't dodge it, QSS' Active will remove it and let you escape.

- Rod of Ages: +450 Health +525 Mana +60 Ability Power, with a passive that gives your Champion 18 Health, 20 Mana, and 2 Ability Power every minute, up to 10 times. It also has a Unique Passive which on leveling up, restores 250 Health and 200 Mana over 8 seconds. While RoA is a great item, it is more effective early game rather than late game, two Doran's Rings is more cost effective with decent health and ability power, too.